Friday, January 9, 2015

This is a recent commission for Orion magazine. Today the thumbnail sketches, tomorrow the painting.
My art is featured in the current January/Feburary 2015 issue.

I was contacted by the magazine after they found my Santa Ana River series while researching an article for their magazine. The article titled "The River in Me" by Susan Straight is about the authors experiences with the northern section of the Santa Ana River here in Southern California.

After some emails back and forth I decided to visit the site in person. The northern section of the Santa Ana River is more rural or natural than my more industrial/city versions I had done previously and I needed to get a feel for it so I could be as true as possible to the site and especially the author's vision of it.

I did some value thumbnails and sent these six for approval.
We decided on number 3.

Vespertine refers to the hour before sunset, not quite dusk or twilight. Poetically it is the magic hour.
While visiting the site I made it a point to really pay attention to the quality and the amount of light and I was surprised how much light is still in the landscape that final hour, more than I expected, much more than dusk but still a different quality than earlier in the afternoon.

As part of my research I took photos of course and although I originally planned to do color sketches on site. Once there I changed my mind.

The alternative was to simply stop and pay attention, make mental notes or write down thoughts. I have found I will remember more when I make it a task in itself.
Photos are good for the technical information and on-site sketches are only good to a point when it is late and the light is changing by the minute. We can get caught up in making the sketches and miss a lot of change. I might get down a color sketch or two but I gained much more by simply observing then committing it and trusting it to my memory.295,296

2 comments:

Of the artwork posted on your blog, I love "Vincent Thomas Bridge #16 (Tribute)" the most - which makes sense reading how much effort you put in... It's going into my inspiration folder. Having ashes mixed into the paint is a very weird idea to me though...

Thank you Iris,The Vincent Thomas Bridge painting was a challenge for sure but despite the struggle I was happy with the finish and thank you for your comment.Fortunately the ashes were mixed into the paint the bridge painters painted the bridge itself with (hundreds of gallons I'm sure) not in the paint I painted the painting of the bridge. Whew!

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About My Blog

Thank you for visiting my blog. Before I started this I very carefully considered the purpose and intent of a blog. Unlike a website it gets updated more frequently, contains more text, and may contain other info or updates not seen on a website.

As others have done, I decided it would be more like a book or journal. Here is the place for my insights on art, my work, and specific images. Something that I miss on some blogs. I'm always very interested in how other artists think, how they arrived at their images, their own uniqueness... different than my own.

When I want to just see images I visit their website, when I want to know more, I visit their blog. I see no reason to have both the same.

With that in mind I designed my blog to be as simple as possible so as not to detract from the art or writing. And although it will be constantly evolving I will try not lose sight of that.

Using the book model, I choose a blog title (book title) and use post titles (chapter titles) different than the titles of the images. Why be redundant? That info is available directly under the image.

Sometimes image titles in series are long or all have similar names, making blog archive searches for a specific image harder to remember and find. So a couple of words taken from or relating to the writing for that post title will make it easier to remember for some, since the writing and image are tied to each other as well as serve as an alternate title, which I don't mind.

About My Work

My artwork generally falls into one of five genre's; Industrial, Seascape, Cityscape, Landscape and Figure. These five genre's very often are a vehicle for representing some other idea, impression or statement. Which means the image may be a cityscape for example, but beneath the surface lies something more. I hope you take the time to examine my work on this basis... looking for the real content... because I know for me, that is where the real joy begins.